Flippin’ great Pancake Day fun at Shoreham College

Students at Shoreham College had a flippin’ great belated Pancake Day as they held a traditional celebration to mark the event.

Although the original plan was to hold the event on Shrove Tuesday, celebrations had to be cancelled due to heavy rain and sodden grounds.

Mr Taylor-West flips the pancake

This long running inter-house competition was introduced in 1973 by the then headmaster, Cannon D.H. Booth, who borrowed the idea from a similar tradition at Westminster School.

Teams of four Year Five pupils were chosen to represent each of the school’s four houses, and each team occupied a corner of a marked-out square on the school playing fields.

The whole school gathered on the sidelines to cheer on their house in the most anticipated and fun inter-house event of the year.

A huge pancake, measuring 18” in diameter was tossed into the air by headmaster Mr Taylor-West.

The crowd applaud

As soon as it left the tray, the teams made a mad scramble to pick up the pieces of the pancake and run back to their corners, where they deposited the pieces into a bag.

Mr Taylor-West said: “It was an excellent event with well-trained scramblers competing with skill and superb efficiency. The pancake was gone in seconds and Nelson took the prize achieving 600 grams more than one or two of the less successful houses.”

Once the entire pancake had been picked up, Mr Taylor-West did a weigh in, using a Newton spring-balance meter, and the winning team was announced to much cheering from the crowd of onlookers.

The triumphant winners were Aoife Cannon, Lilly Skipper, William Phipp and Theodore Johnson for Nelson House, who won £20 for collecting a whopping 1200g of pancake. Grenville were second, Raleigh third and Rodney fourth.

Students scramble for the pancake

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